James Gurney

This daily weblog by Dinotopia creator James Gurney is for illustrators, plein-air painters, sketchers, comic artists, animators, art students, and writers. You'll find practical studio tips, insights into the making of the Dinotopia books, and first-hand reports from art schools and museums.

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or by email:gurneyjourney (at) gmail.comSorry, I can't give personal art advice or portfolio reviews. If you can, it's best to ask art questions in the blog comments.

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All images and text are copyright 2015 James Gurney and/or their respective owners. Dinotopia is a registered trademark of James Gurney. For use of text or images in traditional print media or for any commercial licensing rights, please email me for permission.

However, you can quote images or text without asking permission on your educational or non-commercial blog, website, or Facebook page as long as you give me credit and provide a link back. Students and teachers can also quote images or text for their non-commercial school activity. It's also OK to do an artistic copy of my paintings as a study exercise without asking permission.

Sunday, May 20, 2012

Josep Maria Sert (1874-1945) was a Catalan muralist whose epic works grace the walls of the League of Nations in Geneva and the Waldorf Astoria and Rockefeller Center in New York.

Many of his compositions teem with artistic groupings of larger-than-life figures.

To gather information, he posed human models, but he also constructed elaborate tableaus of small mannikins or maquettes. These little groupings gave him scope to try things that might be impossible with real humans.

He used rods to hold them in position. He dressed some in little costumes to figure out the clothes.

Mannikins only give a rough approximation of a real figure, but they're often a helpful starting point. Sert started drawing and refining right over the photographs. The grid helps him transfer the pose accurately to any scale.

For scenes of storms at sea, he sculpted waves from clay, and placed model boats into them.

I'm sure you know this, but I found it really interesting when I found out: Diego Rivera was originally commissioned to do the mural, but was fired after fighting with Nelson Rockefeller over his request to remove Lenin and Marx from his "Man at the Crossroads" Mural ( http://constellationdefiant.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/man-at-the-crossroads-rivera.jpg ) Rivera repainted the mural in the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City, where one can still see it today.

By the way, I received my 20th Anniversary Dinotopia book earlier this week. Beautiful edition! Congratulations!

Hi, Jim,Wonderful seeing you at Spectrum Live! Let's do it again next year. Congratulations on being named this year's Grand Master.Two corrections, if you could, to this post:Please add the "Jr." to my name.Please change the link to the updated www.bpib.com (the current link is obsolete and you've done me a favor by pointing out that I missed that one during the update/clean-up.)

Hi there. I love reading your blog! But I have a question. You seem to pack a whole lot into each day and get so much accomplished. I would love to read a post about what you do to keep the balance in your life so that you are able to accomplish so much and keep going. Thanks!

So that's how at least someone did it! And the grid behind the figures makes it so you can make all the figures work together better. This is brilliant. Much better than me trying to figure out all these relationships with my 2-dimensional brain. I take lots of photographs of myself in different positions for my work, taping the camera to the wall or setting it up on a shelf, and setting it to a 10-second wait time. Super helpful, but of course I can't get the relationships between people with that method.